Out Of Order

ONE SIZE FITS FEW: The Folly Of Educational Standards, by
Susan Ohanian. (Heinemann, $16.95.) In this diatribe, longtime
teacher and fervent progressive Ohanian comes across like a hectoring
right-wing radio host. In a mere 150 pages, she lambastes--and this is
a partial list--USA Today, Education Week, corporate
greed, the California Department of Education, and everything and
anything having to do with the movement to set curriculum
standards.

In earlier books such as Who's in Charge?, Ohanian emerged as
an astute critic of educational folly. But One Size, with its
self-righteous, sarcastic tone--particularly grating is her insistence
on calling standards advocates "Standardistos"--is less analysis than
an ad hominem riff, portraying standards as the dark machinations of
Fortune 500 executives and conservative think tanks.

Of course, this generalization isn't even halfway true. The
standards movement was launched not by a cabal of elites but by
popularly elected governors responding to public demand for greater
school accountability. Much of this demand came from activist
inner-city parents who wanted a better education for their children.
But Ohanian doesn't acknowledge anything that would dilute her argument
that standards are the work of know-nothing elites, contemptuous of
teachers and students alike. Standardistos, she tells us in no
uncertain terms, are people with "a scope and sequence chart mentality"
who say, "Let them eat cake; let them take calculus."

It's unfortunate that Ohanian takes such a dismissive approach
because it undermines her legitimate, if often overstated, points.
Ohanian smartly challenges, for example, the "let's see how world class
we can be" aspect of the standards movement, which in California has
produced standards like this one: "Seventh graders will analyze St.
Thomas Aquinas' synthesis of classical philosophy with Christian
theology." Sure they will. Ohanian is also right to ask why students
should feel motivated to meet rigorous standards when many will end up
in low-paying jobs that require only a minimal education.

But Ohanian loses credibility when she accuses advocates and
policymakers of promoting standards as a "guarantee of educational
equity." Even the leaders of the California standards movement that
Ohanian so ridicules--a whole chapter of her book is devoted to the
insidious trend of "Californication"--make no such claims. And with all
the ink she gives California, she fails to mention that test scores in
the state have been steadily rising over the past few years, a
development that more than a few observers attribute to standards and a
strengthened core curriculum.

At the heart of Ohanian's anti-standards progressivism is a belief
that "teachers are the curriculum," and she argues here that teachers
can only be effective when they control what goes on in their
classrooms, free from onerous outside directives. Though this view has
been embraced by certain private schools, it's fantasy to think it will
ever hold sway in taxpayer-supported schools.

Ohanian writes that her experience teaching kids of all ages and
abilities has demonstrated the ruse of standards. Few would deny that
one person's experiences and insights can have powerful societal and
political implications. But sometimes, as in the case of this too-often
spiteful work, the personal just seems all too personal.

The Failed Promise Of The American High School, by David
Angus and Jeffrey Mirel. (Teachers College Press, $26.95.) School
reform is always difficult, but at the high school level it sometimes
seems impossible. The reason, scholars Angus and Mirel suggest in this
impressively documented work, is that high school since the Great
Depression has largely served a custodial function. Hence, reform is
not really a matter of improving the academic program but putting a
genuine one in place.

This might seem an overstatement, but the authors have drawn from
extensive data on enrollment and course-taking trends over six decades
to make their case. During the economic devastation of the 1930s,
teenagers were shepherded into high school largely as a way to reduce
competition for jobs. Ultimately, this led to the massive comprehensive
high schools of the 1950s. These schools, the authors point out, had
something of a dual mission. On the one hand, they had to produce an
academic elite that could help the United States win the Cold War. On
the other, they had to pacify the supposedly less intelligent students
with football, cheerleading, and a slate of mindless courses like
general math.

It wasn't until the 1980s, with the barrage of reports detailing the
shortcomings of American education, that this "differentiated high
school," as the authors call it, came under attack. Since then, the
challenge has been to make high school academically demanding and
fulfilling for all students. But to meet that challenge, Angus and
Mirel argue, teachers, students, and parents alike must first embrace
the radical idea that all kids are capable of high academic
achievement.

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